Tim Farron MP: speeches

Speeches

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  Coercive control is by definition insidious, and we do not find out about it until years later—the victim themselves might not even be aware of it until years later. With assisted dying, a victim of coercive control would have no “years later”, would they?

• 7 Sept 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation · Hansard source

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  Will the Secretary of State confirm that the mayoral election in Cumbria will go ahead as planned and that the planned combined authority will be introduced without further hindrance, disruption or uncertainty? Will she also take this opportunity to review the other mistake that this Government have made on devolution in the last couple of years: the errors when it comes to what is referred to, wrongly, as “fairer funding”? Westmorland and Furness is the most rural unitary authority in England, and for that crime it has borne the penalty of a 31% cut in its funding from the Government, meaning that devolution no longer looks like devolution of power and instead looks more like a delegation of cuts for the people of Cumbria.

• 13 Jul 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill · Hansard source

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  This Bill is riddled with bogus context and false premises, as are most debates on this issue. It is worth bearing in mind that the majority of European Union countries take more asylum seekers per head than the United Kingdom. We heard from the Conservative Front Benchers this stuff about young men coming here in disproportionate numbers as irregular migrants. I just want to tell the House a little story on that, which I am sure the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) will also recall. Just over a year ago, we went to Cairo, where we met some young women, mostly refugees from Sudan. One of them was presented to us as the chair of the young mothers group—it all sounded very lovely. It turned out, though, that every single person in that young mothers group had been a victim of sexual violence between the ages of 14 and 20. There are reasons why women do not end up on these boats, and do not take those risky journeys. I wish that we could have a debate on the reality of fleeing for your life from war-torn circumstances. The problem with this Bill is that it is a set of proposed changes that are a combination of the ineffective, the performative and the cruel. Let us start off with the new appeals body. We already see 40% of decisions successfully appealed. How does it make any sense to reduce the quality of the decision-making process now? They tried the same thing in Australia, and it clogged up the system even further. On article 8, 382 applications under the ECHR were decided against the Government in the last 10 years. How many of those were under article 8? Just one. Again, the Government are being performative, and are not tackling the issue. When all is said and done, human rights matter for all of us. To throw them out of the window because of a few difficult cases is to throw human rights out of the window entirely. Telling asylum seekers who have been successfully granted refugee status that they will have to repay the cost of their asylum is performative and cruel. This Government are refusing to allow asylum seekers the right to work.

• 13 Jul 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill · Hansard source

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  I certainly think that people who are seeking asylum in this country should be given the right to work. First, it will help them to integrate, if their asylum claim is successful; secondly, it will enable them to cover the cost of their accommodation and many other things while they are here. How cruel it is to tell people who have gone through goodness knows what and have been granted refugee status that they have to pay it all back. We do not make British prisoners pay back the cost of their time in prison, but we are going to do this to asylum seekers. Again, this is performative and cruel, and it will probably end up costing as much to administer as it would bring in. Victims of modern slavery are terrified of their captors. They are often under coercion, and may not realise that they are victims of modern slavery until much later, so giving people only a handful of days to declare themselves victims is cruel and, again, performative. There is nothing in this Bill to undo or relax the moratorium on family reunion, which is a safe route. Nine times out of 10, the beneficiaries of that safe route are women and girls. The failure to restore family reunion is a deliberate decision to remove a safe route that would have been a good and positive way to counter the need for people to cross the channel irregularly. For the Government to give raw meat to people who will never vote for them anyway—to people who already take the view that immigration and immigrants are bad—is utterly and totally pointless and counterproductive. When the last Government—some of whom are in the Reform party now—did this kind of thing, I thought it was despicable, but at least they meant it.

• 9 Jul 2026 · Waste Crime Action Plan · Hansard source

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  My constituents who live close to the Flusco landfill site in Newbiggin are one of many communities right across the country bearing the brunt of this nationwide scandal. The owners of the site—a legitimate one on paper—have been judged to have flagrantly broken environmental regulations. Like many other sites, this one has been ineffectively regulated and poorly policed. Residents cannot leave out their washing or let their kids play outside. In this heat especially, the stench can be unbearable, and the leachate and gases utterly intolerable. Meanwhile, the country is being ripped off as the Government’s landfill taxes are being flouted to the tune of at least £1 billion every year. Will the Government act urgently and powerfully to help my constituents and all those living near landfill sites, which in recent years have become toxic in every sense?